O Hush The Noise, Ye Men Of Strife
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: ...and hear the angels sing. A series of C/B oneshots which are, conveniently enough, also Christmas presents for my very nearest and dearest.
1. Volley Fire

**_I think the most important lesson ever taught to us by Gossip Girl is that the people who share your blood or your nose or your eyes and raised you are not your only family. My Twitter and FF family are the most fabulicious cheerleaders, commentators, comediennes and comrades a girl could have, and they all deserve foil wrapped Chucks - let alone oneshots - as gifts. As I haven't yet perfected my cloning technique, however, here goes.  
_Volley Fire_ was written for the wonderful _comewhatmay.x_, a truly prodigious author, fellow shoe worshipper, and all round good egg. She requested Christmas angst, and my prompts were 'macarons' and 'burlesque'. Merry Christmas, Steph!  
And to you all, enjoy._**

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**Volley Fire**

'_You're still connected to her. I see it when you're together. I can feel it when I'm in the room_.'  
– Eva Coupeau, Touch Of Eva

'_So this is Christmas  
And what have you done_?'  
– Happy Christmas (War Is Over), John Lennon.

The year turns, and it appears that you've got older without noticing. You could have been fooled, could have been told that it was fifteen year old Blair Waldorf standing there, tears trickling down your face and burning like the acid that burns in your throat. How old are you now, anyway – twenty one, twenty two? Everyone says you ought to have grown out of this silly faze, that you're beautiful the way you are (you're not, of course; you lost Serena, lost Nate, lost Yale, lost Chuck, lost Chuck again and oh, what's this? Lost Chuck again, like a dime down a drain, and what kind of beautiful person would do that?), that you have everything you could ever want and that you should sit still and drink it in.

It's Christmas Eve. You sliced your finger while curling ribbons and didn't feel a thing.

And the face in the mirror is still your face.

You swill a glass of champagne as you re-enter the party, smile blinding, face back in place. One day, when you're off script and improvising, you're sure everything will stick. Nobody noticed you were gone, although there's a chorus of discordant 'Blair!'s and 'B!'s from new arrivals just through the door, handing off their coats like dollar bills to hollow-eyed governments with children as faces because they're too rich to feel the cold (even though you do, and your teeth rattle in your jaw). There is to be no contestation: mingle enough, and everyone will think they know you. Prattle enough, and they'll know that they're your friend.

Scream, and no one will hear you.

You walk through the people in a dream, blindfolded, green walls building from nowhere to lock you in a labyrinth (caught in a trap, can't look back, love you too much, baby). The absence of light is not even what's unbearable. There is light – corner of the room, surrounded by marketing executives, grey suit, looking your way – but it's shrouded, shaded black by a camera obscura but still casting the faintest glow. Serena whispers something about it being the season and all and mistletoe and maybe this time, maybe this time, maybe this hundredth thousandth time, something will come from the two of you other than venom and vice (and then maybe you'll stop destroying each other, and say things like 'how about them Yankees?' and tick backwards like the grinding gears in a clock).

"You're connected," she tells you. "You know you still feel it – after all, everyone else in the room can!"

You murmur something about canapés, escape to the kitchen and line up toothpicks like you're building a fort. There are walls, and a roof and a drawbridge (so what if it's the castle you'll never have?) – and suddenly a tower you didn't put there. You look up.

He looks at you. There's a moment of indecision, flashing like sodium blazing on water, and then he tilts your chin up with one finger and you close your eyes and bite your lip because you can feel _that_, even if the scab on your finger is raw and pink from relentless re-opening and re-examining, the pretence a fibre in the wound or disinfection.

"You're thinner."

"I'm not."

"We could go somewhere."

You open your eyes. "We could drive in circles around the city, and we'd still end up in exactly the same place. There's only one place we ever go." You hate it when he looks at you like that, because it makes your mask slip. "We can't settle on one side of the borderline, so we walk it. I walk it. I am walking it."

"I miss setting fire to the city," he says. "I miss seeing your face."

"I miss the holidays," you reply. "What day is it, anyway, and why should I care?"

"You could try something else. It's worked before." He tries for a smile. "You could try macarons and burlesque, or princes and Audrey."

"You could try scotch and hookers, or gentlemen's clubs and lost weekends."

"Blair."

'_Who's that girl_?'

'_I have no idea_.'

"I still..."

"I know." It's a stretch, even in your heels, but you push for the distance and press your forehead against his, a mirror image of two people (one person) with every part touching but the essentials. You wish you could divide each part of yourself to face the charge of hoping, but such naivete has long been washed into the sewer with the last of your dreaming.

"I know," you say again, as you feel his fingers splay across your bareback ribs and wish he could just fuck you into oblivion, where nothing hurts but sweetly. "But it doesn't change anything."

_Fin._


	2. Something New

**Something New _was written for the fabulous _Stella296_. We live in different countries, we speak different languages, and still we have exactly the same thoughts at exactly the same time (hand size, tee hee hee). I beta her wonderful story _'The Beautiful and Cruel'_, and in return she provides me with get out clauses for avoiding the dreaded ex, spoiler threads like you wouldn't believe and someone to perv over Garrett Hedlund with, no matter the hour. I believe' Secret Santa' is known as '_****_Wichteln' in your neck of the woods._** **_Merry Christmas, Soultwin!_**  
**_And to you all, enjoy._**

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**Something New**

"It's just a game, Blair."

Blair smiled archly, tucking her binder beneath a draped Gucci sleeve. "Yes – a game which involves someone I don't know but who assumes they know me based upon one word on a piece of substandard notepaper buying me a Christmas give I have, according to you, to like."

Serena rolled her eyes. "You make Secret Santa sound like _Psycho_."

"Perhaps because only Hitchcock could have thought it up."

"Come on, B!" Big blue puppy dog eyes had never worked on Blair Waldorf thus far, but that was no excuse not to try them. "What if we rig it so I'm your Secret Santa? I'll get you whatever you want, just join in, _please_?"

"Fine. Fine." Blair uncapped her pen and scribbled something on the aforementioned substandard notepaper. "But I want the Harry Winston Guggenheim diamond pendant, and I want it gift wrapped the stupid way they wrap things for those tourists who like to pretend their husband went out and bought them a nice gift instead of spending his time being fleeced by the three card Monty guy and schtupping a hooker because 'honey, I thought that's what you do in New York!'" She handed Serena her slip with a flourish. "It says 'sparkly'. I think you get the message."

The paper changed hands with a slight crackle, from elegant leather glove to kitschy fluffy mitt. Blair was wearing lavender, grey, black, a pair of glossy purple heels the only bright in her spectrum; Serena looked like a Christmas card cover girl in her scarlet parka, white fur framing her face and whipping lightly in the wind. Blair briefly wondered what to purchase for her friend as she herself received one line of innocuous text: 'leather'. While a more lascivious player might have decided to focus their talents on impropriety, a recent trip to Bloomingdale's had revealed the young Miss van der Woodsen's heart's desire (or one of them, at any rate). Blair fought to keep her face straight as she remembered the Olivia Harris hobo Serena had passed over – in a rare moment of restraint – for an acid green clutch. Once the violently coloured coat and its occupant had disappeared round the corner, Blair called for a car, her maid, and a martini (in that order), and made her way to the store with her cheeks flushed from the cold and her lipstick red for the season.

Surely shopping was far better than aromatherapy for soothing the senses. As Dorota trawled the aisles for the bag in question, Blair happily breathed in the warm scents of leather, canvas, satin and snakeskin, all mixed together with the underlying note of cinnamon which seemed to be constantly pumped in through the vents at this time of year. Oh, how she adored Christmas! The sights! The sounds! The –

"Hello, Blair."

...the inconvenient run-ins with one's soulmate.

"Hello, Chuck," she replied, turning on the spot to greet him with a small, tight smile. "Are you looking for a purse?"

He returned her gaze with a mere tilt of the head to acknowledge her sarcasm. "Yes, actually. Serena needs a gift for Christmas, and I –"

"Are too late," Blair completed. "Sorry to disappoint you, Bass, but as Serena's Secret Santa for this year, I am honour bound to tell you that _I_ will be purchasing her a purse in addition to her Christmas gift." She fluttered her lashes in a coy manner which she was sure would get anyone's blood up, let alone one who hardly needed rousing. "You'll have to find her something else."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes!" She had to restrain herself from stamping her foot. "Look, Dorota's already coming back with the one I want. You can just go and –"

"Dorota," said Chuck, casually saluting the maid with one gloved hand. "Please excuse me, but I'm going to have to take this from you." And to the astonishment of both females, he drew the bag from Dorota's shocked hands and began to speed towards the cashier. Blair immediately grabbed a nearby tote and made chase, as undignified as it was, chasing him through the aisles until she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her adversary in front of the terrified looking shop girl. Both slammed their items down on the counter in perfect unison, and she flinched.

"Excuse me, but this individual just removed this purse from my possession without permission," Blair snarled, not a little breathless. "I demand that security be called and you refuse to let him buy it!"

Chuck tried for a rueful smile, but was too busy trying to prevent the pointed toes of Blair's pumps from meeting his shins to make it truly sincere. "I apologise for my girlfriend. She's one of these modern women who refuses to appreciate that when a man wants to buy them a purse, he's not going to let them pay for it."

"Liar! I am not his girlfriend, and that purse is for a dear friend who –"

"...slightly crazy about me, as you can see. You should see the scars on my –"

"...going to kill you, I swear to –"

"...put in traction for a day and a half, she's a real firecracker when she –"

"...castrate you chemically, physically, emotionally, and then I'm going to grab onto your head and –"

"...ah, hair pulling, did I mention how she's into that? She –"

"...tear you to pieces, and then collect all the pieces and –"

"...like a cat, actually, with these sort of purrs –"

"So you're going to share the details our sex life with the general public now, isn't that generous of you?"

"And you're going to continue to act as if I was a mistake you just happen to repeat over, and over again, isn't that the Blair Waldorf we all know and love?"

Nose to nose, breathing hard, closer than they'd been in weeks, Blair felt her heart banging like a bass drum against her ribs. It wasn't only the aphrodisiac power of proximity, or even the familiar scent of scotch and musk and cologne which scented his coat and the bed where she'd once lain as queen. They were in Bloomingdale's, and it was almost Christmas, and this was quite genuinely the very worst time for him to be looking at her like that (and wearing such a fabulous pink suit, because no one could work a colour like Chuck Bass and she loathed him for it). She was close enough to him that the toes of her Yves Saint Laurents just brushed his Ferragamos (which was more than too close for comfort), and the shop floor had suddenly become very silent.

The girl behind the counter cleared her throat. "Um, I hate to interrupt..." She raised one hand immaculately polished hand, gesturing with a navy painted nail towards the ceiling. "But you're standing under mistletoe." Both raised their heads and sure enough, there it was: glossy green leaves and plump white berries and festive connotations and all.

There was a further beat of hush.

"Bass," Blair said quietly. "If you even _think _about kissing me just because of the presence of some stupid parasitic plant, then I'll –"

But since when had he ever listened to a word she said?

The first kiss was just that – a first kiss. She was glad that their first – their very first – hadn't been as frantic as the second, or the third, or the fifty-third. A velvet sigh seemed to be the same as a kiss in that soft silence, one press of lips together with one gentle exhalation of acceptance and one of relief. She breathed like an anvil had been lifted from her chest, even as her palm curled to fit his cheek, to smooth along his jaw line like the contours of a map she'd know with her eyes closed. A heartbeat pounded beneath her fingers as they broke, exhaled, joined again in sweet, simple harmony. The blood raced through Blair's lips, clouding her brain, eliciting the most irritating and natural of responses when he was around: balance. A return to balance.

"What did you ask Serena for," he murmured. "For your Secret Santa?"

"Something sparkly."

Heat swept her cheeks as he smoothed back her hair. "I have something that might do you justice."

"Chuck Bass." She laid her cheek against his, breathed a whisper of a whisper in his ear. "If you propose to me in Bloomingdale's, I shall be very, very upset with you."

"Limo?" He asked.

"Limo," she replied.

_Fin._


	3. The Bass Who Stole Christmas

**The Bass Who Stole Christmas_ was possibly the hardest thing I've ever attempted to write, and it was written for my highly glamorous friend _bethaboo_. We have already agreed to marry each other and have fictional babies in a Blair themed ceremony (she's wearing the blue halterneck from 4x08, I'm wearing the red dress from 4x02), but until then she is a ridiculously good author, a prodigious toter of happy pills in the form of reviews and a rather brilliant human being besides. Merry Christmas, Twisted Sister!  
And to you all, enjoy._**

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**The Bass Who Stole Christmas**

Every soul down in New York liked Christmas a lot

But Chuck Bass, who lived above New York, did not!

Chuck Bass hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!

Now, please don't ask why – no one quite knows the reason

It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right

It could be, perhaps, his cravat was too tight

But I think that the most likely reason of all

May have been that his heart was two sizes too small

But whatever the reason, his heart or his tie

Chuck stood there on Christmas Eve, longing for pie

Staring down from his penthouse with a sour, dark frown

At the warm lighted windows below in the town

For he knew Blair Waldorf, down in New York beneath

Was busy now hanging a mistletoe wreath

"And she's wearing those stockings!" he snarled with a sneer

"Tomorrow is Christmas! It's practically here!"

Then he growled, with his long fingers nervously drumming

"I MUST find a way to keep Christmas from coming!"

For, tomorrow, he knew, Miss Blair Waldorf would rise

She would wake up bright and early! She would bake up a pie!

And then! Oh, the smell! Oh, the smell! Smell! Smell! Smell!

That's one thing he dreamed of: its smell, and her smell!

Then her friends, young and old, would sit down to a feast

And they'd feast! And they'd feast!

And they'd FEAST! FEAST! FEAST! FEAST!

Oyster stuffing to start with, as Blair's favourite dish

At taste for which Chuck could only but wish!

And then she'd do something he liked least of all

Every friend of Blair Waldorf's, the tall and the small

Would offer their smiles, with Christmas bells ringing

She'd take a hand not his and commence with the singing!

She'd sing! And they'd sing!

And they'd SING! SING! SING! SING!

And the more Chuck Bass thought of her red glossy lips

The more that he thought, "I must cash all my chips!

"Why, for twenty-one years I've put up with it now!

I MUST stop Christmas from coming!

But HOW?"

Then he got an idea!

An awful idea!

CHUCK BASS

GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

"I know just what to do!" Chuck laughed in his throat

And he made a quick Archibald hat and a coat

And he chuckled, and clucked, "What a great Christmas fete!

"With this coat and this hat, I'll look just like Nate!"

"All I need is a limo..."

Chuck Bass looked around.

But since the snow lay thick, there were none to be found

Did that stop wily Chuck?

No! He simply said,

"If I can't find a limo, I'll walk there instead!"

So he called up his driver and gave a day's leave

And began the walk, his biggest pet peeve

All the streets were empty, and snow filled the air

And Chuck dreamed of Blair Waldorf, of her glorious hair

'Til he came to the first house in the fifth street

"This is my stop," the Bassy Claus hissed

And he knocked on the door with a grim, clenched up fist

And soon enough it was opened, by a maid with a list

Who first noted his hat, then his coat and shoes

And saw him for Nate Archibald, relaying the news

That the young man had come, and Miss Blair could come down

But when she descended, it was with a frown

"Why Bass," said she. "What can you mean

By dressing as Nate, do you wish to be unseen?"

"No," he replied, with a shake of his head. "But I saw on Gossip Girl

You and he as a two

So tell me, dear Waldorf, is it true?"

Blair came down the stair with sudden, quick steps

'Til nose met nose like lemon zest on crepe

And she opened her mouth, and she puckered it closed

With her face all glowing like a Christmas rose

Said she to Chuck Bass, "You're a fool! You're insane!

I've been walking with Nate to conceal my pain

Over you, you idiot, for I love you must dear

Now, would you tell me why you are here?"

And Chuck, with a thunderstruck look on his face

Felt his heart begin racing – it raced! Race! Race! Race!

And began to start dreaming of her stocking-top lace

When Blair, with her fair hand, first turned his face

Laid her lips on his lips

Her free hand in his hair

And what else could Chuck do but stay still and swear

That he loved her most dearly, that he loved her most true

For most honestly, there was not much else to do

So he stood and he kissed and spoke these words taboo:

"Insofar as I'm Bass, I'm not Chuck without you."

**The End**


	4. Primum Movens

**Primum Movens _(meaning 'first movement' or 'first cause' in Latin) was written for the fic based hurricane that is _SaturnineSunshine_. Not only was she a big part of my impetus to begin writing vignettes (so you can basically blame her for the entirety of _These Strings That Bind_ etc__), but she is a fabulous author who quite genuinely deserves to be carried around on a litter and fed grapes by the Sexwick. Merry Christmas, Carolyn!_**  
**_And to you all, enjoy._**

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**Primum Movens**

His earliest memory is of the lady in red – satin bows on her shoulders like epaulettes of honour, a matching headband peeping out from those glossy brown curls. He thought she looked like a doll, the kind you kept in a box and no one was allowed to play with. Her hand was tugged on by other, lesser beings, golden and flashy and blinding, but still she shook her head and bit her lip. Was she scared? She looked like a red rose in a field of daisies, but could she still be scared? Like him, scared? He caught her eye, held the look as she shifted uncomfortably and pulled harder with her small, white teeth, flushing as scarlet as her bows.

He smiled.

She stuck out her tongue.

She may not have come running to him, but at least she'd moved.

He liked her bows and in the quiet, adult part of his mind – which was to expand too quickly, at the detriment of all others – he hatched a plan. He watched her lithe figure flash between the trees as she hid and longed to be caught, and tried to spell her name when he spelled his own.

C-h-a-r-l-e-s.

_No_.

C-h-u-c-k.

_Better_.

B-l-a-i-r.

_Best_.

The next day, Chuck Bass wore a bowtie to school for the first time.

He was ten when someone told him that his mother had played the piano. He sat in front of the grand instrument for hours, banging on it with earnest, unpractised fingers. All light in the room was focused on the doorway, and the dust motes swirled. Who would help the boy more prone to passionate anger than deference and respect? He boiled quietly, seething, the melodies becoming more and more broken as the pads of his fingers thundered down, red and hot against the icy white.

"Oh, don't do that!"

A jangling stop/start as she hurried into the room, wincing with supreme delicacy. She barely took up a sliver of the piano school, lither than ever, pale in the doorframe light which glittered across her eyelashes.

"Here."

Fingers curled over his, softening the claw.

"It's not a ball, Chuck, you don't have to slam it."

The circumference of his wrist, her fingers slender and not even meeting around it.

"Looser. You need to be strong, but not tense."

Her shoulder warm against his, the scent of her hair painting his world scarlet.

"Now play the chord."

He played his first true note with her hand resting lightly atop his, and when he turned their cheeks brushed and she stood up and fled. It took another ten years for him to perfect the instrument, but when he did nobody was sure who backed whom up against what and charged his body with electricity. In the moments between – when she was silent, supine, eyes glazed and body crackling – he played the same chord, over and over, and it kept pace with the ragged stitches of her breathing. The lady in red lay in shreds of cerise; an alarm blaring in his head saying _I am alive._

Her just deserts are his concerto, life breathed back into his fingers.

But as for rooftops...rooftops have always been his first, primary, before the rooftop at her birthday and the rooftop in Brooklyn and the rooftop at Victrola and rooftop, rooftop, rooftop. There's something about being precarious, swimming with the sharks that arc in a wide black ocean with lights like gilt, false in the water. He has walked between the devil and the deep blue sea since the day he was born, when kismet chose to take the mother in lieu of the son (and then the mother chose the brother in lieu of him, and he chose power over everything, and everything snapped back with a palm like tear-lashed lightning, and the world was forever skewed). He used to like pitching bottles over the edge and letting them smash, dead diamonds and decaying emeralds for the proletariat and their sins. He had pulled her up here, once upon a time, to admire the shattered glass in the sky (because no casual-maybe-somethings look at the stars) and felt her dissolve into sugar, melt into caramel and spread slickly through his bloodstream.

'_Why_? _It's not like you ever do anything athletic_.'

'_Well, that's not entirely true now, is it_?'

'_Fine, nothing that requires removing your scarf_.'

'_That was one time, it was chilly_.'

But it was almost too hot in the hellfire of her heart.

It's possible to promise her things. He's done it before, and it seems to be the sort of thing that lovers do. All his promises, however, sound half-assed, half-baked: _I will run away but I'll always come back, I can't be strong for you because I need you to make me strong, I wasn't meant to be all you need but at least I'll try_; he'll try. He'll try like he did with that necklace, those peonies, the velvet-covered box (no heart beating there) in his bottom drawer. He'll try like he tried playing the third chord and ended up hitting the fifth. He'll try for her.

So for a long time, he keeps on trying. Perseverance is rewarded with a quickly bitten smile, self-denial with the brief, silent pleasure of her arm at a party or gala. What a white knight he can't manage to be, with such dark thoughts about the slope of her mouth; they're still going through courtship backwards, beginning at the end, and the middle is the most rutted of all. Red, red, the world is red – red for her blushes when he says something he shouldn't, red for her ruby ring, a heart and another lie. He sends her the subtlest of reminders for Christmas: red ruffles for the gown she dragged him from the water in, her cold mouth on his, water drawn from his lungs. She reciprocates with a daringly cut suit in deepest, richest plum – where the colour would seem black if it weren't Chuck Bass wearing it – and her card, elegantly monogrammed with one word crowding the other side: _Paris_.

Paris is their battleground.

He boards the plane.

He finds her waiting at the Gare du Nord, leaning on the railing with her eyes seeing nothing, as casual as if she didn't expect him to come at all.

"You like edges," she announces. "You like the risk." She turns toward him, and the dark irises of her eyes are almost consuming when it seems as if he's grown taller. "My life is safer without you in it."

He runs his thumb along her jaw, follows a blue-burning blood red vein to completion in her temple as she breathes slowly, a mere tremor of air. "So?"

"Why? Why this? Why us?"

"You like staircases," he replies. "To lead up to edges and risks."

"I don't like falling," she says.

"No," he agrees. "But you like to jump."

Their kiss is a cliché and there are far too many pairs of lovers in Paris, but it's enough.

_Fin._


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